Ball State @ Akron

[ZachTheZip]

I agree, he does have some good moves.. He needs to fight the temptation to slide the trailing foot to avoid walking calls but all in all he's pretty solid when he gets it on the block

He hesitates too much when he gets the ball on the block. He'll dribble for five seconds before deciding to take it to the hoop, and that's why he travels or turns it over or blows a layup as often as he does.

If he would catch, spin, and put the ball up without that hesitation, he would be scoring double digits every night.

[skip-zip]

I have a bias towards liking true centers in games. For a long time, I thought Pat should start and play a lot. He is a productive guy and was last night, but not what the Zips need in the starting line-up.

Actually, I think his greatest value is what we needed last night.....a guy big enough to defend Majok. He's pretty fundamentally sound, he's just a little slow and has suspect hands. But yes, we need to find more ways where he can help us, it's just not as a starter.

[phil]

I agree, he does have some good moves.. He needs to fight the temptation to slide the trailing foot to avoid walking calls but all in all he's pretty solid when he gets it on the block

Pat needs to go straight up when he gets the ball under the basket in a scoring position. Last night he got a great pass. After 3 ball fakes, he was fouled and we took the ball out. A wasted scoring opportunity.

[Dave in Green]

Wow, I take a few days off to get a home project done, and no one does any math fact checking on a game thread. I see there was a little excitement about the new starting lineup being left in beyond the first media timeout as if that's what led to the Zips winning performance. Let's do a quick check of the math starting with the first half:

15:33 -- media timeout after Zips starters have been outscored by 2 points and are losing, 6-8.

12:19 -- first subs enter game after Zips starters have been outscored by 4 points in the game's first 8 minutes and are losing, 8-12.

04:29 -- 8 minutes after inserting subs, Zips have gone on a 22-2 run and are winning by 16, 30-14.

The starters were -4 in the first 8 minutes of the first half and with subs were +20 in the next 8 minutes.

Then there was the second half, where the starters began with a 16-point (35-19) lead:

14:54 -- media timeout and subs enter game after Zips starters have been outscored by 6 points and are winning by 10, 43-33.

10:57 -- 4 minutes after inserting subs, Zips have gone on an 11-0 run and are winning by 21, 54-33.

The starters were -6 in the first 5 minutes of the second half, and with subs were +11 in the next 4 minutes.

The real story is in the facts, and the facts are that the Zips starters were outperformed at the start of each half and only after subs came off the bench did they run up big leads.

[skip-zip]

Dave...very, very interesting. I only wonder if Majok was on the bench during these runs by our subs.

Maybe we're all giving too much credit to the new starting lineup after that 3-point barrage by Kretzer the first game they all started together?

[Dave in Green]

Skip, only 5 of the Zips' first half points were scored with Majok on the bench, and only 7 in the second half before he sat down near the end of the game when it was out of reach. Most of the minutes in the Zips' big sub-fueled runs were made with Majok on the floor.

It's true that some players seem to respond better to starting and others to coming off the bench. That's more of an individual personality thing, and doesn't necessarily mean that the starters are always the "best" players. If we listen to what the coaches and players have been saying in their interviews lately, they're telling us that the most important factors in the Zips' recent resurgence have to do with team chemistry and everyone starting to get more comfortable with the roles they need to play going forward.

While much of the focus on the Zips has been on the weakess at PG, this team has a lot of strength in the frontcourt and at the wings. It's pretty clear after having given everyone on the bench a fair chance to perform over the first half of the season that the Zips' best all-around players are those 6-6 and above, where the team is deep. That's where the focus is now being placed, and it's paying dividends. While taking only 1 shot from the field between them, Melo and Nyles combined to play 39 minutes against Ball State with more assists than turnovers. That freed up Q to play the wing. The Zips are adjusting to the reality that they can be effective as a team without any scoring from the PG position as long as they can get the ball to one of the other 4 players in scoring position. Tree, Q, Jake, Nick, Reggie, Kwan, Pat and Big Dog give the Zips 8 solid scorers from 6-6 to 6-11.

[GP1]

@ Dave, I just want to make sure I have this correct. All of the starters were removed and the subs brought the team back?

[Dave in Green]

@GP1, nope, I didn't say that. From watching Zips games everyone knows they don't substitute 5 for 5. In the Ball State game, here's how things went in the first half with time of substitutions followed by starters/subs on the floor followed by the score (UA-BSU):

20:00 - 5/0 (0-0)

12:19 - 2/3 (8-12)

11:56 - 1/4 (8-12)

09:54 - 2/3 (14-12)

08:30 - 3/2 (19-12)

07:53 - 4/1 (19-12)

06:43 - 5/0 (21-14)

05:51 - 4/1 (24-14)

05:05 - 3/2 (27-14)

02:53 - 4/1 (35-18)

01:39 - 3/2 (35-19)

00:29 - 4-1 (35-19)

00:00 - 4-1 (35-19)

The point is not that the subs did all the damage and the starters none, but that various mixes of subs and starters performed better than the starters by themselves. In other games the mix will be different as different starters and subs have hot or cold games. The Zips have a lot of good players starting and coming off the bench.

[MaxZIP]

@GP1, nope, I didn't say that. From watching Zips games everyone knows they don't substitute 5 for 5. In the Ball State game, here's how things went in the first half with time of substitutions followed by starters/subs on the floor followed by the score (UA-BSU):

20:00 - 5/0 (0-0)

12:19 - 2/3 (8-12)

11:56 - 1/4 (8-12)

09:54 - 2/3 (14-12)

08:30 - 3/2 (19-12)

07:53 - 4/1 (19-12)

06:43 - 5/0 (21-14)

05:51 - 4/1 (24-14)

05:05 - 3/2 (27-14)

02:53 - 4/1 (35-18)

01:39 - 3/2 (35-19)

00:29 - 4-1 (35-19)

00:00 - 4-1 (35-19)

The point is not that the subs did all the damage and the starters none, but that various mixes of subs and starters performed better than the starters by themselves. In other games the mix will be different as different starters and subs have hot or cold games. The Zips have a lot of good players starting and coming off the bench.

Look at that first sub. Change.

[Dave in Green]

Explain.

[GP1]

The point is not that the subs did all the damage and the starters none, but that various mixes of subs and starters performed better than the starters by themselves.

Couldn't it just be that Ball State is a terrible team and was going to disintegrate even if we had Moe, Larry and Curly on the court along with two other guys? Big picture Dave, big picture.Sometime a good team beats a horrible team because the horrible team is horrible.

[Dave in Green]

@GP1, the point about what a terrible team Ball State is only emphasizes the fact that the new starting 5 struggled against them to open both halves. Surely you're not trying to deny that the Zips didn't start performing as expected against a horrible team in either half until they started subbing?

[GP1]

@GP1, the point about what a terrible team Ball State is only emphasizes the fact that the new starting 5 struggled against them to open both halves. Surely you're not trying to deny that the Zips didn't start performing as expected against a horrible team in either half until they started subbing?

After many, many, many years of watching sports, I've seen a lot of horrible teams come out early against great teams and put up a fight for a few minutes until the wheels fall off. Sort of like the boxer who comes out swinging wildly early in a fight hoping to get an early knock out against a better fighter only to fail at it and get knocked out mid way through the fight.

You seem to be stuck on this whole subbing thing. Sort of an intellectual hurdle you are having trouble getting over. It's really about 2-3 key players and what coaches do around them. Subs are important as they relate to their interaction with the key players. When subs play and their impact on barriers the team needs to overcome is more important than the amount of time they play.

But, since you are our residential numbers guy with a lacking aptitude for putting numbers into perspective or action, I'll put it into some really understandable. The Zips season will boil down into two sections: Tinkering and Thinking Bigger. The tinkering part of the season involved KD mindlessly tinkering with his line up and it resulted in the Zips going 11-8 beating their usual bunch of nobodies while getting losing to the likes of MTSU, SC (twice and getting smashed once), getting smashed by Iowa State and getting smashed by Toledo. We won 58% of our games during that period.

Post tinker, or Thinking Bigger, has given us three wins in four games (75%). We smashed a team we should smash in Ball State, won at CMU on the road and beat a very good EMU on the road. Losing a rivalry game last night was disappointing, but a couple of plays here or there and they win.

I'm sure a lot of the apologists will call it "settling on a rotation". They can call it whatever they want to make themselves feel better. I called it a coach who was sick and tired of getting is butt kicked and decided to go all in. I'm all in with KD going all in after taking my advice.

[Dave in Green]

@GP1, I get it, I really do. I get the whole part about Coach Dambrot "mindlessly" tinkering with the team until he stumbled upon your expert advice. After nearly 10 years of reading your stuff, how could anyone be unaware of the self-aggrandizement shtick? To me it's all sales speak, and I'm pretty much immune to that. Anyway, there are a number of knowledgeable basketball fans on this forum who all see things a little differently, and many of us learn from each others' observations. Reading between the shtick lines, I've even learned a little from you at times. But not so much on this one.